done my duty. Good morning."

It is often said that there is nothing so indispensible as the
newspaper. It is the moulder of public opinion; the medium of free
speech; the promoter and stimulator of business; the prophet, the
preacher, swaying the multitudes and carrying them like the whirlwind
into the right or wrong path. To millions its the Bible, the Apostles
Creed. Their opinion of God, of religion, of immortality is shaped by
what the newspaper has to say upon such subjects. Glowing headlines in
the newspapers have kindled the flames of Anarchy, and started men upon
the path of destruction like wolves stimulated and brutalized by the
scent of blood, to pause only when irrepairable evil hath been
wrought.--"When new widows howl and new orphans cry." What a power for
evil is the newspaper! The newspaper arrayed on the side of the right
hurls its mighty battering-ram against gigantic walls of oppresion until
they fall; takes up the cause of the bondman, echoes his wails and the
clanking of his chains until the nation is aroused, and men are marching
shoulder to shoulder on to the conflict for the right. What a power for
good is the newspaper! I once heard a great editor say that "although
newspaper work was hard and laborious, requiring a great store of
intellectual strength it was nevertheless a fascinating work." But in
the South where freedom of speech is limited to a class _grit and
backbone_ outweigh intellectual ability and are far more requisite. When
we consider the fact that many white newspaper men have "licked the
dust" in the Southland because they dared to emerge from the trend of
popular thought and opinion, the Spartan who without a tremor held his
hand into the flames until it had burned away was not more a subject of
supreme admiration than the little Octoroon editor of the _Wilmington
Record_ whose brave utterances begin this chapter.

The great newspapers of today are too engrossed in weightier matters to
concern themselves to any extent with things that promote directly the
interests of the ten million black Americans. That is largely the cause
of the existence of the Negro editors. The Negro, like the white man,
likes to read something good of himself; likes to see his picture in the
paper; likes to read of the social and business affairs of his people;
likes to see the bright and sunnyside of his character portrayed; so he
often turns from the great journals (who are if saying anything at all